Salvage of the Republicans - Yeah, right

Is it even possible to go back? I doubt it, but you all seem to think you can "fix" the current Republican party and restore it to its Reaganesque "greatness". Yah, that wasn't that great you knobs...

I have spent plenty of time since 2020 surfing around the various Never Trump factions, largely glad that I found some “sane” former Republicans who were dead set on nullifying the threat that Trump posed to the nation and even the wider global community.

In many ways, I was reassured that not all the right leaning folks were beyond redemption, and whilst I didn’t always agree with their desires, I recognized kindred spirits.

Yet lately (in the last year primarily) I have begun to wonder if they really are the allies they claim to be.

Look, I get it, you are a life-long Republican, and you probably claim that you are that way because of your desire for smaller government, freedoms, lower taxes, or some airy trope about foreign policy. Or they really care about abortion, or they are deeply religious.

Regardless of where they come from, they are — and have always been — temporary allies. And they make it abundantly clear that once the “fever” breaks, they are going back to their old retromingent ways.

As I started drafting this, I was wondering who I should highlight? Charlie Sykes? Bill Kristol? Jonah Goldberg? Liz Cheney? And there are many others. But, like a bolt from Zeus, I see that one of my least favorite Never Trump Republicans, David French opened his pie-hole for an at best tepid endorsement of Harris.

(gift link to the article if you want to self flagellate)

This headline, that I fully believe French wrote himself (thus you can’t pin it on the moronic editorial staff) is the problem. Clearly, he (like the bulk of the Never Trump cohort) is of the mind that their pet theories of conservatism will snap back in once the MAGA fever has broken.

The theory is once Trump is gone, preferably after getting so thoroughly trounced in an election that he slinks away with his tail between his legs, that their pet “conservatism” will then become the dominant force in America again.

That once this fever breaks, we can go back to arguing about substantive policy differences, and not deny nearly half the country the label of human (because the current MAGA base truly believes that the Democrats and liberal Independents are subhuman trash). But it is increasingly clear that is not ever gonna happen.

That is some weapons grade hopium there folks. Let’s look at what Monsieur French leads off with:

I believe life begins at conception. If I lived in Florida, I would support the state’s heartbeat bill and vote against the referendum seeking to liberalize Florida’s abortion laws. I supported the Dobbs decision and I support well-drafted abortion restrictions at the state and federal levels. I was a pro-life lawyer who worked for pro-life legal organizations. While I want prospective parents to be able to use I.V.F. to build their families, I do not believe that unused embryos should simply be discarded — thrown away as no longer useful.

The truth is, he is still a religious bigot, perfectly happy to cram his moral narrowmindedness on the rest of the country. He did celebrate the fall of Roe. And he rejoices in the insane impositions of religion across secular society that the current MAGA aligned courts are handing out like Ronnie Jackson’s Drug Emporium handed out tranks and uppers to the Trump staffers.

Picking on French some more:

Since the day Donald Trump came down that escalator in 2015, the MAGA movement has been engaged in a long-running, slow-rolling ideological and characterological transformation of the Republican Party. At each step, it has pushed Republicans further and further away from Reaganite conservatism. It has divorced Republican voters from any major consideration of character in leadership and all the while it has labeled people who resisted the change as “traitors.”

Yeah, but dude, you are fucking happy with plenty of the net results of this MAGA religion.

I get it, you are at best a temporary ally, and you can’t go back to putting your thumb on the rights of others to provide preference of your backwards religious beliefs that encapsulate your patriarchal caste system rigidly in place, keeping women servile, barefoot and living the broodmare life¹.

And you can find similar things across the anti-Trump comic universe.

I will admit that for almost 3 years, I was a due’s paying subscriber to The Bulwark. I found them in the depths of the 2020 election cycle, and they were like a security blanket to reassure me that not all of those to the right of me were insane assholes.

Alas, they really were never the allies I believed them to be.

Throughout the time that I was a subscriber and for the time after I stopped funding them but still read their “free” assets (in particular, I enjoyed reading Kim Wehle’s posts, the Press Pass, and listening to the daily podcasts) I had detected a slight (ok massive) shift. They were no longer just fighting against Trump and his moronic minions, they were increasingly offering their “advice” to the Democrats. Dump Biden, elevate one of their favorites over Biden. Harris was a mistaken choice for veep, she’s terrible, blah blah blah.

But the Bulwark is not unique in their “advice” for Democrats. No, pretty much every bastion of Never Trump in the public ecosystem believes that their moral high ground as capital ‘C’ Conservatives give them the right to tell the Democratic Party how to run their coalitions, their strategy, their messaging, and the campaign.

Aside: The one exception that I will acknowledge is that The Lincoln Project has been 100% focused on the Orange Minge, and defeating his tiny fingered attempts to regain a grasp on the country. They haven’t played the fantasy politics, or dared to play the holier-than-thou cards that most of the other Anti-Trump outlets have.

When did this come to a head?

It started on July 21, when Biden initially announced that the public pressure campaign — stoked mightily by the media and these same Never Trump assholes — and their barely constrained glee that they were going to get Whitmer, or Shapiro, or maybe Wes Moore, or possibly Beshear, with an extreme fantasy pick of Buttigieg (for the two Log Cabin member’s egos).

The assumption was that if Biden is out, well, we all know Kamala Harris isn’t going to be able to rally the troops. They all wanted a West Wing fantasy mini primary, a goat rodeo, where their pet Liberal(ish) pol gets to prove his(her) worthiness and taking the blue ribbon, whilst they pat themselves on the back for helping those hapless Democrats. Spare me.

Their rationale for this exuberant lip-smacking anticipation of a jungle primary and a coronation of their favorite on the floor in Chicago was that Biden just stepped aside but made (smartly in their minds) no endorsement, their little political sex organs began getting aroused. Yassssss, they were going to get to play in the sandbox, like they OWNED a seat at the Democrat’s table, and in fact that they were entitled to the seat at the head of the table, where they could dictate the natural choice, as they saw it.

But 30 minutes later, this fever dream broke when President Biden came out with a full-throated endorsement of his Vice President, and a commitment to help her in the quest to unseat the Mango Mussolini.

(also, it was clear that the second that the notification dropped, Harris was working the phones like a woman possessed to sew up endorsements, and commitments from the state-by-state delegates)

Suddenly, the Never Trumpers began to realize that they weren’t in charge, and that the Democrats, while they are happy for their mixed bag support, weren’t going to let them drive the bus.

And it was glorious to see their hand wringing about how it was rash to ruch to Support Harris. I mean, don’t you realize all this raw talent (read: people we like) that you are ignoring? But all of their pets quickly and enthusiastically endorsed Harris. The final straw? The most ambitious Democratic politician in the country, the one you would expect to mount a challenge, Gavin Newsom, fell into line, they grudgingly admitted that their pet theories went down in flames.

Thank God for that.

Just like they dismissed Harris as an unserious candidate, it is also clear that the Trump campaign expected one of those other “top tier” bench sitters to rise to the top.

As confirmation of this, yesterday I loaded up The Next Level podcast to see how the youngs at The Bulwark (it was just Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller, JVL is on vacation) were reacting to the choice of Tim Walz as Veep.

And I made it through about 8 minutes of it. It was rant after rant about how stupid it was, how much of an unforced error it was, to not choose Josh Shapiro, their favorite. They offered the usual pundit puffery, Shapiro would help lock down Pennsylvania, he’s better on Israel/Hamas, he is a smarter choice yada yada.

I had to turn it off. Of course that was recorded early on Wednesday, and they hadn’t seen the life that Tim Walz has breathed into the race, driving excitement, and rather effectively countering the bullshit that the MAGA minions keep flinging like monkeys at the zoo flinging poo.

I wonder what they think after watching the juggernaut that is the Harris/Walz campaign continue to build momentum and excitement?

I am beginning to think that the Never Trumpers are increasingly irrelevant.

And they expect that once Trump fades from the scene after eating his last Big Mac, they will be part of the new ruling class, able to lay out the new Republican party, and get back to fucking the Democrats.

Uh, look folks, the MAGA base is never going to support their hoity-toity cerebral conservative thinkers. Nope, when Trump exits the scene, the fever ain’t going to break. And they still don’t acknowledge that their favorite institutional Conservatism has a minuscule slice of the electorate, and that without the MAGA folks, they will never have a chance to win.

You hate to see it. Let me say it clearly to the Never Trumpers in the back seats: THE REPUBLICAN PARTY is now all MAGA, and it is never coming back. You might as well partner with No-Labels to build a new “conservative” party.

But you have played the culture warrior so long, the religious warrior, the corporate warrior, that you have a bodged coalition that makes the fractious Democrats seem cohesive.

No, building a conservative only party will be a tiny fraction of what is needed to win nationally, so you will inevitably reach back out to bring that MAGA sugar rush back in, with the intent to control them.

Good luck with that, fuck-ohs!

1. Sorry, not sorry. That is really what French and his ilk want regardless of their public statements.

---